Creative unveils new ZEN player

Creative certainly isn’t out of the running when it comes to portable media players, and the Singaporean company has just released yet another portable media player that could potentially challenge the iPod’s dominance (albeit the chances of that happening isn’t exactly optimistic to say the least…nothing at this point in time does seem capable of taking on the iPod juggernaut while emerging victorious). What makes the latest ZEN portable media player stand out from its predecessors? For starters, it is extremely small. To be exact, credit card-sized small, measuring a mere 55mm x 83mm x 12mm.

The screen is certainly nothing to sneeze at, bringing a cool 16.7 million colors to your eyes with 2.5″ of viewing real estate. That’s the minimum screen size that my eyes would tolerate, although 3″ would have been way better (bear in mind though, a larger screen size would be detrimental to the battery life of such a slim device). You get 16GB of storage space courtesy of the integrated flash memory that does away with the dangers of skipping tracks while you’re working out or sitting through a really bumpy ride. Just in case that amount of memory is insufficient for your traveling entertainment needs, there is always an SD memory card slot for you to further organize your libraries across multiple SD memory cards. An integrated FM radio with 32 station presets keep you entertained even though you have cycled through your entire collection of portable music. A voice recorder and a personal organizer rounds off the list of features, where the latter boasts ‘To Do’ lists, calendars, as well as contacts that can be synchronized with Microsoft Outlook.

This new Creative ZEN will come in 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB flavors, and boasts the distinction of being the first Creative player that supports the AAC format. Heck, it even features support for unprotected iTunes Plus tracks, MP3, and WMA files. Will you pick this over the 5G iPod Video?